The invention pertains to a motor vehicle door. The motor vehicle door may be a driver, passenger, rear side or stern door employing a pivot hinge or a sliding hinge.
In conventional vehicle doors, it is common to join the rigidness providing structural parts, such as a support or carrier element or a lining element, with various functional components which provide the vehicle door functions, such as window regulators. Previously, these individual components have been manufactured and handled separately. The functional components have been connected directly or indirectly to the support or carrier element by hinges, hinge straps or similar movement elements and/or closing elements. A drawback to the prior art door is that the connector of the functional component to the support or carrier element is expensive and subject to strict manufacturing tolerances. There is also an increased demand for rigidness of the door as the weight of the door is reduced.
While vehicle doors made in one piece out of plastic are known per se in the art (DE 1 655 656 A), these prior art doors have utilized a molded-in steel plate. The functional components are fixed to the steel plate by standard methods like screwing or welding. A disadvantage of this prior art door is that strong loads are exerted upon the molded plate by the functional components. Additionally, as the plastic must be made strong enough for carrying such loads, the plastic is heavy.
The vehicle door of the present invention reduces the number of components in the door while providing for an inexpensive, lightweight, and durable vehicle door. A molded composite or sandwich structural part, hereinafter collectively called a foamed component, is manufactured as a structural carrier or support of a vehicle door. The foamed components includes a plastic based matrix. Functional components, which serve as rigidness providing bodies which are molded in (completely or in part) and connected to each other by virtue of said plastic based matrix. The vehicle door of the present invention is comparably light in weight and of non-flexural design. As the functional components are molded in, the forces are well distributed.
The foamed component of the vehicle door of the present invention is able to withstand the forces of drive and the forces of the moving components due to the combination of inherent stability and the functional components which are molded in to form the foamed component of this invention. Watertightness is also achieved.
The functional components employed to serve as rigidness providing bodies for the foamed component can be rails or windowpane guides or channels, a drive ground plate or motor housing or a window regulator, speakers, crash pads or crash beams, a latch housing, or an airbag system. It is to be understood that any common functional component can be utilized.
The aforementioned, and also the claimed features described in the preferred embodiments hereafter to be used according to this invention, are not subject to any special exceptional conditions with regard to their size, configuration, material selection and technical design, so that the selection criteria known for the particular application can be used unrestricted within the framework of the claims.